Tips for reducing stress - university lecturer

[ocelot41]

I know I am lucky in lots of respects - on the whole, I like what I do and have a lot of flexibility as regards my working hours. But the last three years have been super stressful - lots of lecturer job cuts, cuts to support services and the number of students I am expected to deal with has more than doubled. Many of these students also need additional pastoral and learning support after coming through Clearing. That is difficult to provide with such large numbers of students, is emotionally draining and increases marking loads because of the number of students needing to take resits.

This is the first Xmas in many years I have been able to take more than stat days off.
I don't like how stressed I have become and would like to make more time to be with DC. Does anyone have any good stress-busting, time creation strategies to share?

Thanks Doctor. Sounds like a plan! I like the idea of a draft workshop. Although I might run two as so many of my students do a LOT of paid work and some are also parents or carers for parents with health problems. I wouldn't want them to miss out because they couldn't make one day...

OK, so looking back over this thread the main survival strategies are: manage student expectations early, organise formative feedback so drafts must be in 10 days before workshop/s, scale down summative feedback to a handful of main points and abandon line by line marking up and use templates for marking with copy and paste comments.

My 'Great Escape' strategy should involve prioritising a single-authored book as well as j articles and prioritising time for grant bids.

Its a plan folks....THANKS. The last few years have been tough so it is good to feel as if I have a way of moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel...

May all you fabulous academics receive good scholarly karma in return for your kindness here!

Frankly, if you have three articles under review at the moment, you were considered 3* internally last time, AND you're only just post-PhD, you should be thinking about applying for new jobs NOW. There should be more job openings in the coming spring after the post-REF wasteland. It sounds to me like you'd already be highly, highly competitive, much more so than my PhD students who, while outstanding academically, don't have many publications or much teaching experience. You have both in spades.

But don't drop back down to a Postdoc, not even at a prestigious university. It's a backwards move from a permanent post (even not a great one) and will look inexplicable to future employers. Not to mention the drop in salary.

No, I think you're in a good position to move now. Take the plunge!

Awww thanks Pirate.

I have been doing the Drudge work so long I think I have been losing confidence a bit...

Can I also ask how important it is to be seen (and heard) at the big conferences in my field? I have noticed that other folks who present regularly and are well-known and liked are often seen as the 'go to' people for my area.

I like these people enormously, would love to work with them myself, and wish them all the best. I don't DO the whole competitive manoeuvring thing, in fact I hate a lot of the cattiness that goes on in academia.

At the same time, I do wonder if I should have done a bit more of that rather than focussing on publications because I dont seem to be thought of in quite the same way. I am naturally quieter and I would feel awkward and embarrassed 'working a room'. I also have finite time and very, very limited resources for conference attendance.

But should I be learning from these people and putting myself out and about a bit more as a precursor for applications?

Publications publications publications. Not conference presentations. No one looking at a bunch of CVs for a lecturing post are going to even look at the list of conference presentations, except perhaps to see that the list exists.

There might be mileage in choosing a couple of conferences very selectively, bringing on the big guns paper-wise, and using those as networking springboards over the next 12 months. Especially if they are the kind of conferences where preliminary job interviews are customarily held.

But you'd be much better off and get much better known if you actually organised a conference or workshop. Who in your field do you want to get to know? Get an exciting conference proposal together, secure some funding, and invite them to contribute. That is far more likely to get you noticed than a 20 minute conference paper on one of fifteen parallel paper sessions.

PS - ignore the competitive people and the competition. The only person you should ever compete with is yourself. That's actually probably my best secret.

Thanks Pirate. I do present at a couple a year and have organised conferences before, but there are some people who attend EVERYTHING and so I wondered if I was being too lax on that front...

No. :)